Chapter Sixteen
CHAPTER
Sixteen
We were not lucky. (On either count, but who’s counting?) As soon as we got close to the town house, I realized something was amiss, but didn’t realize what it actually was until the officers were climbing up the stairs.
“Oh. That door.” I gestured at the servants’ basement door, which was down a flight of stairs and usually shut tight.
I’d never actually seen what it looked like open.
Now I did: a yawning black hole. My stomach plummeted to my feet. “Oh no.”
“Oh no,” Vienna echoed, staring at it with dismay.
The officers did their search, but came out alone, which was what I’d expected as soon as I’d seen that open door.
“He must have gone out that way,” the younger one said.
I hoped it wasn’t my pause for dramatic tension that had given the intruder the crucial moment to escape.
“We can check if any of the surrounding homes have cameras so we can see which way he went. He must have removed his mask at some point. Maybe we could get a glimpse of his face.”
I’d seen enough WANTED posters featuring photos from those cameras, all blurry and half-formed snatches of forehead or cheek, to know how that would probably go. Still, I nodded, because who knew?
The police left. I called my car. As we waited for it on the sidewalk, our backs up against the side of a stoop so that nobody could swoop in and stab us from behind, I asked Vienna, “You didn’t recognize his voice, did you?”
“It sounded vaguely familiar,” she said. “But I couldn’t pinpoint it.”
I thought back. The sound of his voice was already fading from my memory, but I could swear I’d heard it before too.
From someone at the gala? I imagined myself walking around in my gown, smiling and nodding.
What would that voice have sounded like telling me how impressed they were by all I’d done?
It was no use. Not to recognize the voice, and not to will any nights like that back in the future: I was so hoping the attacker would still be there not just because he’d already tried to hurt us and might do it again, but because his capture could bring this whole nightmare to an end.
But no. My nonprofit and all the kids it was supposed to help were still in jeopardy.
The black car pulled up, and we piled in after only a brief hesitation to make sure my driver’s voice wasn’t the same as the intruder’s. Once safely locked into the back seat, a bottle of sparkling Balian water in my hand, I let myself exhale. “Why would somebody want to kill us?”
Vienna was silent for a moment. “You’ve been investigating again, haven’t you?”
I wasn’t going to lie to my best friend. “Yeah.”
She was silent for a moment. “It has to be connected. It must mean you’re getting close.”
“I was going to look into Bibi next, but that obviously wasn’t Bibi,” I said. “Still, everything you told me was suspicious. And she could’ve hired someone to come after us.”
Vienna was silent for another moment. “You know, there was one thing she said. I didn’t think it was relevant if you weren’t investigating, but…
I did tell the police.” She snorted, rolling her eyes.
“Not like they can do very much without a confession or her blood under his fingernails. She has so many lawyers running interference.”
I nodded, understanding. Of course the police would’ve questioned Bibi, like they questioned most of my family members after my grandma’s murder.
But that was where it stopped unless they had cold, hard evidence to take it further, because mistakenly arresting an Afton or a Phlume could have dire consequences for them.
Vienna continued, “I thought she was on the phone while we were passing each other going in and out of the bathroom, but she might have been talking to herself. All I know is that she said, ‘I can’t believe tonight is going to be the last time I see him.’ I didn’t think anything of it at the time. But, obviously, after Conrad’s murder…”
“She knew he was going to die,” I said slowly.
At least, probably. I didn’t entirely discount the idea that she could’ve been talking about another “him.” But it was awfully convenient that she said something like that after having a fight with her husband and then her husband went and died. “She knew.”
“She knew,” Vienna confirmed. We sat there in silence, letting the words roll around our heads, until the car dropped her off.
At home, I relayed the whole thing to Gabe, who’d just gotten home from a tutoring session.
As soon as I got to the break-in, he leaped up from where he was sitting on the couch, disturbing Squeaky from where he’d been rubbing against his leg.
“What?” His fists were clenched as if he were about to punch someone, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen his face darken with fury like this.
Not going to lie, it was kind of hot. If the intruder were here right now, I’d bet Gabe would rip him into pieces.
But, as quickly as the anger had taken over, Gabe wilted, shaking his head, clenching his jaw with frustration. “I should’ve been there. What if…” He couldn’t even finish the thought.
“Nothing happened to me. I’m okay,” I said.
Yes, it was traumatizing that someone had tried to kill me.
Yes, it was even more traumatizing that they’d probably be back.
But I’d already contacted private security firms for me and, just in case, for Vienna.
Armed guards following us around should dissuade any future people trying to cut us to pieces.
Shudder.
“So we need to figure out a way to get to Bibi,” I continued.
“I’ve already emailed her about the house and she hasn’t gotten back to me.
I don’t want to come on too strong—can I rock up at a grieving widow’s home to chat?
Do people still bring, like, casseroles to grieving widows?
” I stopped and considered. “Also, what exactly is a casserole?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never had a casserole.”
“It sounds… French?”
Gabe sighed. “Okay. I’m not even going to start.”
Before we could solve that mystery, my phone buzzed.
An unfamiliar 212 number. I always picked up 212 numbers, whether I knew them or not.
Yes, some of them were spam. Yes, other ones were reporters trying to get some kind of comment about how I felt now that Opal was in prison for twenty-five years to life.
But others were calling to offer me roles on reality TV shows.
I’d love to go on Celebrity Survivor again.
The other contestants had underestimated me all the way to the finals, because while I was terrible at the actual tasks of surviving, like making fires or catching food, I was excellent at turning people against each other and making my teammates hate someone else on our team more than me. (Thank you, brief modeling career.)
Anyway. Nobody was calling to ask me to judge another Top Chef baking episode, which was disappointing. “Pomona Afton?” The voice was quiet, throaty, an older woman still figuring out her lower postmenopausal register, definitely not Kristen Kish’s or Gail Simmons’s.
“Yes?” I said.
“This is Bibi Phlume.” She paused for a moment, as if she wanted to give me time to marinate in how ridiculous the name sounded. “The police have informed me of an incident that took place at my building.”
I didn’t think I was imagining how she emphasized that “my.” My shoulders tensed.
All thoughts of the murder fled from my mind.
Well, not all thoughts, considering that the murder was the entire reason we were having this conversation at all.
“Yes,” I said back to Bibi. “Not a big deal. I meant to contact you about it, but I’d already emailed you about the building and hadn’t heard back and didn’t want to bother you, and frankly, it’s such a small thing anyway. ”
That was a blatant lie, as directly contradicted by the urgency with which I’d hired my new armed guard (I’d requested someone who wouldn’t be wearing all black leather and looking like an obvious commando.
Hopefully they’d give me someone who knew how to match prints and solids so that I wouldn’t feel embarrassed to be seen with him).
She called me out. “It didn’t sound like such a small thing.
My insurance rates are going to go up. I’m having a security system installed right this second so that nobody can get back in.
Honestly, Pomona, you might want to hold off on the work anyway until after I’ve had more of a chance to assess my husband’s estate.
I apologize for the delay in emailing you back—I’m still thinking everything through.
I’m not sure if we have the same goals for his portfolio. ”
A delicate way of saying, Don’t waste any more of your time with the place, because I’m going to sell it to the highest bidder. Panic flared inside me. “Can I take you out to lunch?” I said. “I’d love to tell you more about the… incident. And we can discuss our goals as well.”
She was silent for so long that the panic flared again.
She was totally going to blow me off because she didn’t want to give me bad news to my face.
I understood. I’d done the same thing when I didn’t want to tell Jessica the reason my mom hadn’t invited her to her fifty-eighth birthday party (Jessica had asked if she could bring anything to the party, which somehow my mom had interpreted as Jessica asking to bring macaroni salad, so my mom was insulted by the idea that she could be perceived as the kind of person who would throw a party that merited a bowl of macaroni salad).
But maybe Bibi’s curiosity won out, or she wanted to see if I was really on the natural blue diet rumored by the tabloids (there were so few natural blue foods that the blue diet was actually a cover for an eating disorder). “All right,” she said. “Meet me at Avianna tomorrow at noon.”
Avianna—a buzzy new restaurant that had come out of nowhere to hit all the city’s best-of lists.
And all the way across town. At least it was in a location I couldn’t easily take the subway to.
It wasn’t like I would take the subway, but it would mean I’d have Gabe telling me I should take the subway and giving me a judgy look when I of course would not. “It’s a date.”
The fly buzzing right into the spider’s web. Avianna was the web, obviously. But which one of us was the fly, and which the spider?